Turkish Ambassador to Gambia defends Operation Olive Branch

The
Turkish ambassador to The Gambia has defended the military action along the
Syria’s Afrin Region, saying the fight against the Kurdish People’s Protection
Units (YPG) militia and its political wing – the Democratic Union Party (PYD)
is designed to nueutralise the threat posed by these terrorist elements.

Ambassador
Ismail Sefa Yuceer, who was speaking in an exclusive interview with The Point,
made it clear that Ankara has no wish to take territory from another country,
and that control of Afrin Region will be handed over to the Syrian regime at
the end of the operation.

The
military action dubbed Operation Olive Branch is to establish stability along
Turkey’s border with Syria and to remove not only the YPG/PYD, regarded by
Ankara as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has
been conducting terrorist attacks on the civilian and military targets in
Turkey for more than three decades, but also Islamic State fighters alias Daesh
from the area.

“Operation
Olive Branch started on January 20. As you may be aware, Syria has a problem
for the last seven years and on the other side terrorists made a sanctuary in
different parts of Syria like the Daesh on one side and Kurdistan Workers’
Party, (PKK), Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Democratic Union
Party (PYD) on the other side. These are the main terrorist elements in Syria”.

Ambassador
Yuceer acknowledged that due to the power vacuum in Syria, these terrorist
groups had the freedom to operate in the region, because the central government
is faced with other issues.

He
maintained that these terrorist elements have their grounds in the Syria
territories, affirming that the position of Turkey since the onset is to
safeguard the territorial integrity of Syria.

“This
was our main concern because we believe that the territorial integrity of Syria
should be kept intact. This was our starting point with the Syrian policy.”

The
Turkish-Banjul diplomacy chief noted that these terrorist elements should be
wiped out from these border territories because they are not only killing
innocent people in Syria, but also displacements of civilians.

According
to him, the population in some part of Syria is forced to leave their
settlements.

“This
displaced population movement in Syria has brought some problems for Turkey,
because at the moment we are hosting more than 3 million displaced people.”

These
refugees, Ambassador Yuceer noted, are forced to leave Syria for many reasons
among them, the repressive regime of Assad.

He
indicated that the problem is a Syrian problem but Turkey is the country most
affected, pointing out that Turkey is spending more than 30 billion dollars
from education, health and other basic necessities.

The
Turkish diplomat revealed that these terrorist elements are in control of 30%
of Syrian territories.

On
the diplomatic front, despite U.S. concerns, the international community has so
far been supportive of the operation as it is meant to wipe out terrorist
elements in the Afrin region, thus guaranteeing Syria’s territorial integrity.